Last night I wrote a flippant review of Zolve.com and honestly, I had to take it down. Everything inside of me wanted to yell at the screen when I saw the price and I saw what you could (and even worse, what you could not) do with Zolve.com. I read the back story on Brian, how he is a successful real estate Broker just back from Iraq. I also read how the site was built while he was in Iraq, and he’s home in time to launch it- thank God for that.
I’ve opted to write something positive because this is someone in real estate (just one of us so-called “stupid Realtors”) who had the balls to actually DO something for the profession- and with some tweaking, he is in a position to steal the show. The question is, will he do it? Time will tell. I ask everyone who would dare complain about the site to take a deep breath and dive into their own blogs and comments where they challenged other industry leaders to lead- Brian should be celebrated, not beaten up- although I find no way to really disagree with many complaints of the site.
I promised Brian 30 days to knock out the wrinkles in Zolve.com’s threading and hope you will too. So without further ado here are my Top 5 Constructive Suggestions to Zolve.com
- Reduce the price to $99 first year, $ 249 the second year (if you really must charge at all) and remove the money back guarantee completely.
- Remove the beautiful lady on the front page, making her an option to the visitor.
- Remove subjective ratings completely- a referral is a referral, the rating isn’t necessary.
Now, those were just the Top 3 ‘duh’ suggestions, here’s the money shot:
- Leave blogging as an option- but build community wikis – sell area codes if you want, or hey- do it Zillow style for free. You have 100s of writers on Zillow communities answering questions to draw Zillow business simply because Realtors really have no where else to participate (besides Trulia). Give Realtors credit for participation if you wish- let their participation be their ranking so long as they’re participating in only their pre-chosen zip codes.
- Discussion Forums for Real Estate & Lending. Why leave this to outsiders?
*BONUS* Charge Realtors for advertising space & leave the profiles and direct referrals to the Lenders; these are the big corporate budgets you seek.
I give Brian Wilson the credit he deserves for taking a shot at the influx of venture capital companies invading real estate. As I said, he had the cajones to stand up and be counted. We as a profession should get behind ideas and make them Great Ideas.
